Worst Number Ever
by Underthedesk
Summary: Post fourth season finale... Team Machine each struggle to find a way to bring keep Harold from devolving as he grows more frustrated in his efforts to fix The Machine. (I aimed for porn-y and wound up somewhere else. Also, Rinch took over and wound up a bit head-hoppy by the end. My bad!)


Worst. Number. Ever.

"Are you telling me I don't know how to defrag The Machine drives?"

"Not at all. Only that if you did, I wouldn't need to do them again." If translated out of Harold talk into English, there's a chance that statement would require hand gestures, and possibly pimp slaps. And that was one of the _nicer_ conversations they'd had recently. Most of the time nowadays, Harold just pursed his lips in that 'if you don't have anything nice to say… (then at least let people know you're thinking it)' way of his and turned back to his precious monitors. Avoiding eye-contact, drumming his fingers while he worked, arguing potential fixes out loud with himself as if the others weren't on the same plane of reality as he was, much less in the same room… It was like watching a filmstrip of the social development of one of those people rescued after decades of living alone in a jungle, but in reverse. He was devolving.

Worst of all was the way he said "What?" when his train of thought was interrupted – so whenever anyone said anything to him. It sounded innocuous, but everyone could tell the subtext was 'What are you doing interrupting me when I'm clearly so busy with more important things?'

The fact all their conversations revolved around the ailing Machine had done a good job of making Harold's new 'tude appear stress-induced. While it was certainly stress-related, Root now ruminated over the idea that Harold's problem, and, by extension, the group's new problem, may stem from somewhere far different.

"What do you think Harold's problem is?" She had no qualms with asking Reese this while Harold worked only ten or so feet away from them. This was partly due to his pretending they didn't exist for days on end and partly due to her being, well, Root.

Before Reese could answer, Fusco dropped some knowledge and a pile of take-out on the table. "You mean besides needing to get laid worse than any ten people I know?"

Okay, so it wasn't just her, then. "Seriously?"

"You're right. More like twenty. Jesus, that guy's wound tighter than a Swiss watch with O.C.D."

"I was hoping that wasn't it…" Root trailed off as she saw the look Reese and Fusco exchanged, the one that said Reese had been about to say – or avoid saying – the exact same thing. She thought of The Machine as a friend, and that made Harold her friend's dad. Which made the entire train of thought weird.

However, weird was, for them, not the same thing as inaccurate. If anything, it was the opposite. "Huh." She looked back over at the human being trying, unsuccessfully, to mind meld with the nearest hard drive.

Fusco shoved a spring roll in his mouth and impressively managed to somehow talk around it as he dished out the food. "Think about it. Reese and you had some flirtations to keep you going. I…. I do alright…" Fusco paused for questions or interjections on this topic, though none were forthcoming. "But Harold? At least monks get the love of Mary and Jesus to keep them warm at night. All he's got is binary code and that arty chick he can't see again without putting her in mortal danger."

Reese grabbed for some orange chicken and gave Root a 'men are pigs' shrug. "The man has point. A rude, vulgar point-"

"Aw, thanks, partner!"

"But it's still a pointy one."

Fusco decided to push his insight further. "Didn't you ever notice we work better when there's a number to save? So go save Boss Man! Geek is the new sexy; how hard can it be?"

"But why does it have to be me-" The words were barely out of Root's mouth before Fusco tossed Root a box of Chinese take-out and immediately instigated a round of not-me. Ever the quick one, Reese had his finger to his nose almost before his partner did.

This left Root holding the bag… and a now sloppy box of kung pow.

Root waited until the partners were back at their day job. Soon, she found herself watching Harold tap his thumb against his workstation in the train. "Is there something you needed, Ms. Groves?" In the old days, he'd have asked if there was something she wanted. Now he needed to imply other humans were flies buzzing around his head even while accepting food.

"Gifts for the one true God. Apologies for my existence. I'll leave it here, oh mighty one."

Harold turned his head back to his work. His eyes had never left it, but he'd at least angled his head towards Root slightly as she'd entered the train car. "Thank you; I'm not hungry."

 _If this goes on any longer he won't even tip his head when we barge in,_ Root theorized. "Then at least drink the water. Human computers don't work without hydration."

"Fine." Root knew Harold-speak enough to know this was a way to end the conversation, not a form of agreement of any kind.

Rather than do as he so clearly wished, Root parked herself on a train seat and watched Harold work. When that wasn't enough to drag his attention away from their mutual acquaintance, she pulled out an apple and took a large, noisy bite.

"Is there something else?"

Root considered her options. She could go about this the subtle way, or… "Did you know Buddhist monks aren't allowed to touch their penises? And yet, for some reason, all the ones I know insist on peeing while standing up." Root punctuated this with another apple bite.

Harold's hand froze above the keys, though he still didn't look up. "Fascinating, as always. Though I'm not sure what application this has to our current predicament."

"The boys have asked me to find you a nice girl. Or a nasty one. Or maybe just one in our price range."

Harold's hands fell back again onto his keyboard, a thunder of clacking keys. "Get out."

Of course, Root did exactly the opposite – especially considering her gambit was working. Going by the flush in his cheeks, she was at least getting his mind off the Machine for a few moments. Pushing her luck, she decided to go in for a shoulder rub. "I think they nominated me because they assume I'd know more about women than they do, which… is fair. I may be a sociopath, but compared to Fusco-"

"I mean it. I'm at a critical juncture with the latest update-"

It wasn't lost on Root that the words 'no' or 'stop' were conspicuously absent from that sentence. She tried for a deep-tissue sort of rub-down, or as close to one as Harold's three layers of clothes would allow for. "So I do get their point. But that's not what makes me right for this job, is it, Harold?" Root spun Harold's chair around and leaned her face in close to his. "I'm the right man for the job because I know what it's like. The siren lure of crawling into a machine, into the order, the righteousness of it all. I'm the only one who can tell you where it will lead…."

Root pulled the chair by its arms until Harold's wide eyes were inches from her own. "It'll turn you into me."

Before Harold could respond, she spun his chair back around, pushed it back into his work station, and leaned into his ear. "The group already has one me, and it can barely handle that many. It needs you, Harold. And you need someone to draw the blood away from your head for a little while or you might just explode."

An idea tickling the back of her mind, Root decided to get down on her knees by Harold's leg. She was rewarded with a just slightly nervous "What are you doing?" from her mark.

Root grinned and stood up again, now holding a bottle of water from the bag of provisions she'd dropped at his feet just moments before – back when Harold still thought he was in control of the conversation. She opened the bottle and placed it pointedly on his lap between his legs. "I'd like to say I'm doing this for your own good, but we both know that would be a lie. I'm doing this for her good. Your well-being is her well-being." Root pulled out a second bottle of water and took a long drag off it. "Now, normally I'd just look at your web searches, but something tells me you're a bit more Buddhist than that. So how about, I just go back to this…." She moved behind Finch and started rubbing his shoulders again. "And you just tell me when you want me to stop."

Root had just started working down Finch's back when their phone – the phone once bricked up in the wall of the station – rang.

"That was fast! Maybe Fusco's had you figured out all along." Root dropped her efforts just long enough to step out of the train…

Which is when the doors shut behind her.

She didn't even know they could shut.

Harold paid her the compliment of looking away from his work for a moment, but Root got the impression it was just to make sure she knew that the call had come from him – a wake-up call to clarify for her that she wasn't wanted.

It was then that Root remembered how much she sometimes hated the fucking numbers.

* * *

Fusco reread the text that had appeared that afternoon on his phone: _I'm tapping out. But apparently our fearless leader is not averse to a good shoulder rub. Either that, or he didn't know I was there. One or the other._

Every man has a skill set, and Fusco had suspected this job might require his. In addition to being a father, in addition to being what was called a 'shoe-leather detective' (CBS wasn't going to be making a NCIS or CSI shows about him), and in addition to being the most reality-based of all his compatriots on what they had taken over his strong objection to calling 'Team Machine' (what was next, fucking t-shirts? Hats?), he had one other skill that had, so far, never come up in their shared work. One club left in his bag for the big, damn showdown. The number that, if helped, could lead to all the future numbers that would follow.

Fusco knew porn.

He had worked two summers as a counselor at a camp in the Catskills and while there he'd learned he had one ability that was a quasi-super power: He could tell what porn someone liked. As super-powers go, it wasn't very impressive. Unless you were the overweight camp counselor forced into the gig by a well-meaning uncle who was convinced no health or weight problem could withstand eight weeks of fresh air and fucking sunshine. If you were also trying to curry favor with the more athletically inclined counselors – the ones who threw the best after curfew parties and knew the names of the counselors at the girl's camp across the lake – then it meant a great deal.

Fusco looked over the racks of one of the last true dirty magazine shops he knew of in the city proper and listened as the proprietor made small talk. "Half the time it's all Japanese tourists in here! And they just want to pose for a photo! We're on some sort of map or list or somet'ing. 'See a real New York skin shop.' I used to get called all sorts by all sorts. Now I'm 'authentic,' whatever that means."

"So you're saying they never buy anything?"

The proprietor gave an old-man wave of his hands that men of a certain generation knew communicated a multitude of ideas. In this case, it said 'that's not the point.'

Fusco shrugged some rain off his coat. "I hear ya." He looked over the offerings and tried to figure out if the selection had been better when he was a kid or if it just seemed better because he lived out his teen years in a pre-internet era. When the sight of skin meant you were lucky enough to find a mag somewhere (a man once drove down Fusco's street and tossed one out the window, making his week and the week of every other young teen on the block)(in his heart of hearts, this is where he thought his super-powers began – a type of origin story, if you squint and look at it sideways) or it meant you had hit the teenage lotto and found a girl willing to trade skin visions with you.

Being chubby and the kid of a cop (and not the teen heartthrob, CHiPS kind, either), the occasional magazine was young Fusco's version of getting lucky for a few long years. A peep into the keyhole of adulthood. He assumed that some part of him always knew that it, adulthood, would never look that good again – he knew plenty of adults who didn't act like being an adult was some life-long streak of good luck. If anything, they acted like it was the opposite. But that didn't make his few glances into one type of very 'adult' world any less exciting.

"People these days got no appreciation for what we sell here," the old man railed on. "We sell privacy! You know the government has machines that spy on our internet searches. I mean, you just know it. Someday someone's gonna take the presidential oath and then later the CIA is gonna say 'so, midgets, huh? Here's what we want.'"

Clearly, the last smut peddler in New York was smarter than he looked. "That ain't even the half of it. I could tell you stories that would turn your hair blue."

"You a cop?"

"I thought the badge and the paunch gave it away."

The old man shook his head. "Eye sight's been gone for near-on ten years now. Everyone's just a blob to me. Good for business; no one likes to think they'll be remembered here. Privacy! That's what I'm saying!"

The man's poor vision struck Fusco as almost unbearably tragic. "You mean you can't even read this stuff? Get out." The part of Fusco that would always be sixteen immediately wanted to buy the man a beer and ask him about his life story or something – anything to make up for this Greek God level of punishment. Deciding this was one of the better instincts handed down to him from his teenage self, Fusco took time out of his quest to shoot the shit with the old man who dedicated his life to an art form he could no longer enjoy. The last of a dying breed – soon to be followed by the 'shoe-leather' detectives, Fusco quietly assumed. He lamented the downfall of civilization together with Ed. That was the old man's name: Ed. Fusco had been expecting something more in-keeping with the store's time warp vibe, something that screamed 80s like Rocco or de Salle.

Or Fusco.

Ed polished his counter with pride, having clearly already bumped Fusco up from one-time customer status to work pal. "Used to be, people like me were accused a' keeping people from interacting face-to-face like. Now it's all computers. And do people mind now? They do not. I'm sure if I'd a' been a coke dealer or just destroyed the economy I'd a' been considered far more respect'ble."

"Your bank account woulda been. That's for sure." After sharing a laugh, Fusco decided to at least pretend to have no super-powers here. After all, he was already part of a secret-group of crime-fighters. They even had a lair! He didn't want to be the kind of super-hero that pushed hospital techs aside just to show off his x-ray vision. "Maybe you can help me out. Buddy a' mine is laid up in the hospital. He's looking at months of recovery and – get this – no phones or laptops allowed."

"Doctors…"

Fusco knew without further explanation that he'd picked the right cover story. "Doctors. Exactly. Anyway, we want to put a smile on the guy's face. All he's thinking about it rehab, rehab, rehab. Haven't seen him crack a smile in…" The years of their acquaintanceship rolled back through Fusco's thoughts. "Maybe ever."

"Not 'one of the guys' then, huh?"

"Workaholic. Wouldn't know a day off if it punched him in the face."

Ed looked Fusco over as if only now taking the measure of him. "And this is the guy who brought you out in the pouring rain for skin mags?"

"He'd take a bullet for me. For any of us." It struck Fusco at that moment that he'd slipped away from the cover story and wondered into cold, stark truth. "He really would."

The old man leaned back on his stool. "Not a lot of men like that these days."

"So you see why I'm here."

"Okay, son." Fusco took a brief moment here to enjoy being around someone so much older than him. He doubted he'd be on the receiving end of those 'sons' for much longer. "What do you think this buddy of yours would like? Let's start with the basics. Blondes? Brunettes?"

"Hmm… That's actually a good question."

"What about gay or straight? You can never tell these days. I used to have to keep those in the back, but they're up front now. We were one of the first to do that. No judgment."

Fusco strained to recall any pertinent details. "He was engaged once." When he ran out of those, he went for impertinent ones. "He dresses like Tim Gunn."

"Look, buddy. Not to rag on you, but you're a detective and all you can give me is he was engaged-"

"-to a redhead."

"God save him! He was engaged to a redhead and he dresses like Tim Gunn?"

Fusco considered the question. "What would you recommend for Batman? You know, if Batman walked in here right now. And was a nerd."

Ed took in these details with interest, but also with a cool, professional aplomb. "Nerd Batman who likes redheads, huh? Let's see what we can do…"

* * *

The next time food was brought to Harold in what Root had begun calling 'the Birdcage,' it came bundled with four magazines of dubious reputation. One called 'Jugs,' one called 'Rump' (which had renamed themselves 'TRump' for one issue, but no other backside magazine that featured redheads could be found and Fusco wasn't willing to rule out that Harold might be a fellow badonkadonk admirer), one magazine about Asian women with big breasts (the same publication that won teenage Fusco some fame around the campfire – he just had to see if there was still a little magic in it), and a gay men's title called THRUST. Because no judgment.

Harold looked over the titles while a patch ran on his work. This led to some self-indulgence in the eye-rolling department, but nothing more. It distracted him for only a few moments before he went back to something more stimulating: watching the code update itself. It was as if, at any moment, the machine might just start talking to him again, telling him what it needed, what he needed to do for it.

The next day, upon seeing his carefully chosen gifts tossed – seemingly from across the room - near the bin with the previous day's take-out containers, Fusco pulled out his phone and sent a quick group text. _Tag, you're it._

It was quickly followed by one from Root: _And then there was one..._

* * *

There were actually two left at that point. Everyone liked to talk about how Bear didn't understand English, but Bear was a smart dog – a smart dog surrounded by people who, other than a command or two, spoke nothing but mother-fucking English all the mother-fucking time.

More importantly, even if Bear hadn't picked up English words, Bear spoke family. He spoke hushed conversations, worried glances. He spoke frustration. He spoke Glasses talking out loud to himself as if he had been a very Bad Dog. He spoke used coffee cups and weird, untouched magazines being thrown across the train car (and not in that fun HALEN way). He spoke Glasses punching his fist against the table when no one else was around to see it and then cursing himself while he struggled to bandage it.

Or, if Bear didn't speak it, at least he understood it.

Bear tried a number of times to bring Glasses a chew toy, up to and including some of his favorites. He even played 'Dumb Dog' and brought some of his friend's garbage back to him, as if chop sticks met the minimum requirements of proper throwing sticks. Of course you'd have to be a Dumb Dog to think that, not a Slimme Hond like Bear. But on especially bad days Bear was willing to be a Dumb Dog for Glasses. Glasses was sad. Glasses yelled 'STUPID' when no one was around. Glasses now thought he himself was a Dumb Dog.

Bear wanted Glasses to know he'd be okay. They could be Dumb Dogs together.

He was excited when Glasses turned away from the lit-up wall he stared at all the time (like a Bad Dog – who ordered him to face the wall like that?). He even nudged Glasses into throwing a chew toy for him – you had to work slowly with humans, but they get the idea eventually.

However, Glasses threw the toy outside of his box. And when Bear went to fetch it, he found he couldn't get back in again. He wasn't sure who locked Glasses in like that, but he howled at the door so he'd know he wasn't alone. So he'd know he was a Good Dog, too.

Then Bear took a nap. You can really only spend so much time on humans before the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

* * *

In the wee hours of the following morning, Reese walked into the IRT stop and surveyed the situation: The magazines were thrown against one side of the train car, Harry's hair was a mess as he ran his hands through it yet again, garbage was piling up… Even Bear offered a small howl of 'I can't talk to him when he's like this!' (though Reese had no way of knowing that's what Bear meant).

Reese considered the man trapped in front of the monitors, stuck in what Root had taken to calling 'the Birdcage."

 _The Birdcage._

After a brief stop near a suitcase with an unusual collection of very delicate weapons and a quick knock on the Birdcage door, Reese was stepping inside. "How's it going?"

The answer didn't interest Reese. Even the question only interested him in so far as it gave him the opportunity to step in behind Harold and jab the needle in his neck without arousing suspicion.

* * *

When Harry came to he found stars swimming in and out of his vision. It took him a moment before he realized the stars were real (through the ballet they danced for him was not).

"Good morning."

Harold grabbed his head as he sat up. Only one of those choices proved to be a good idea. "My head is swimming."

"That's the propofol. It'll clear up… or you'll have a psychotic episode. One of the two"

As soon as the double-visions came to an end, Harry felt confident enough in his mental capacity to take in their environment. "Central Park? Are we having a picnic of some kind?"

Reese swept the grounds with a glance, checking for suspicious activity. Of course, 'suspicious' for Central Park when the sun was just barely considering rising for the day might be… Actually, Reese wasn't sure what he would consider suspicious under the circumstances, which would explain a lot about how they got there. "This isn't a picnic. It's an intervention. For future reference, it was disturbingly easy to get an unconscious body in here at night."

"I suppose they're more worried about people dragging bodies out rather than in." He looked at Reese hesitantly. "If I may ask…"

"Fusco and Root think you need to get laid."

"Going by our choice of location, I see you don't agree with their assessment." Some rustling formed by two people behind a tree not thirty yards away caught Finch's attention. "Or perhaps I spoke too soon…"

Reese shrugged. "You probably do. Probably, we all do. But this is something else. It's the best I could do on short notice."

Harold looked around. He wasn't sure what he was looking for but he assumed he'd know it if he saw it. "I don't see anything to indicate what you're thinking, bringing me here. Considering you staged a kidnapping, I'd have thought you'd have some sort of plan in place."

Reese… He didn't smile, not exactly. But he gave Harold the look he only gives when he knows he's truly in command of a situation. "I decided to go with a lower life form than escorts. Quite a few of them, in fact." Before Harold could question him further, Reese put a finger to Harold's lips and then tapped his ear.

It was only then Harold realized what he was hearing. "Birds…"

A small grin slowly spread over Reese's features. "It's a fallout day, according the NYC Audubon website. I don't know what that means, but they seemed to think it's a big deal."

In a rush of blood and bad-idea making, Harold jumped to his feet, taking in the trees around their secluded nook. "It is, indeed!" His head spun around, trying to examine every branch at once. "I think that's a Cooper's Hawk!"

To keep Finch from spinning any further (Reese had done a quick guesstimate on the dosage he'd given the slightly smaller man – if he was off by even a bit then spinning around on a rock in Central Park was a weapons-grade terrible idea), Reese pulled out a set of binoculars, along with a notepad and a pencil. "If you promise to sit down and stop scaring me, you can even have the supplies I brought."

Only now realizing that Reese had pulled him up onto a somewhat tall rock face, Harold carefully retook his seat. "Thank you, Mr. Reese." He set to work cataloging every note of every warble. "Although I suppose it isn't often one thanks one's kidnapper."

"One of the women I reported to had a strange view on the subject of vacations. If an asset was burned out she'd send a team to shoot them full of drugs and keep them knocked out for days. After a while, you'd be woken up and told you'd just had your vacation." He looked around the park. "This seemed better."

A few moments of pre-dawn stillness passed between them, the silence only broken by the cacophonous bird chorus above.

"Of course if you are looking for something else in the park," Reese offered, "you should know we got two propositions before I woke you up. If you're interested."

"Only two? I wonder if that's a reflection of the park's gentrification or of how you and I are aging."

"I blame Giuliani."

Suddenly the binoculars were lowered. Harold looked down at his hands. "I suppose you do deserve and explanation for my behavior. My…"

"Root is calling it your devolution."

Harold winced at bit at the accuracy of that. "Of course… You have to understand, I had so much more energy when I was younger. I could code for weeks, months… And in my naïveté, I thought it would be my weakest work. Teenagers have no focus, no attention span – that's what everyone said. I thought, if I can focus this much now, as a feckless young man, imagine how much focus I'll have when I'm just another boring adult. I'll be able to code for years and years…"

Harold looked down at his hands and wondered when they'd turned into the hands of an old man. "I'd give anything for that child's energy now."

Reese sighed. "Well, Harold, on the plus side, you are having the strangest mid-life crisis I've ever heard of."

Harold turned to look at him. Reese knew that the way Haorld turned his whole body to give a withering stare was due to the accident, but he couldn't help but think it was somehow went deeper than that, a gesture uniquely tied to the Harold Finch experience.

"I'm hardly mid-life."

Reese gave him an arched eye-brow for that somewhat whingey statement. "You know, not to join team 'big pimpin,' but you're forgetting about a pretty significant difference between teenage Harold and our Harold."

Harold's face hardened again, slipping back into the human machine he'd tried to become lately. "Teenage Harold didn't have people he was responsible for. Yes, I am aware of how many people my asocial tendencies may hurt. But without those habits, I could endanger far more."

Reese ever so slightly shook his head. "That's dramatic, but that's not what I'm referring to. Maybe I never met teenage Harold, but knowing what I know about teenagers I'm willing to bet teenage Harold thought hacking might get him laid."

Harold turned his attention back to the trees, his hands already moving to record for posterity another sighting, another song. In a voice just barely above a whisper… "Is that an offer?"

"It might be."

Harold kept working on recording his observations as if the conversation held no interest for him. "For God and country, is it?"

Reese moved around behind Harold and decided to try some of that shoulder-rubbing that Root swore Harold responded to. "I think we've done enough for others for the time being. This would be for you."

Harold gave him that searching, wide-eyed look that Reese knew so well. It occurred to him in that moment that he'd been missing it lately. "And for me. Just promise me afterward you'll eat something that doesn't come in a cheap bag with a plastic fork."

Returning his attention to the trees, Harold lifted the binoculars back to his face – but not quite quick enough to hide the color that rose to his cheeks. "Patience, Mr. Reese, is still a virtue. We have a lot of birds to get through first."

Reese leaned back against the rock and watched Harold meticulously inventory his new friends in the sky. Morning was coming, then some time to themselves, then Harold would do what he does best, he'd fix what was broken.

"Who's in a hurry? I'm just enjoying having something to look forward to."


End file.
